In its pair of seasons, Apple TV+’s Foundation managed to craft an entertaining sci-fi series from Isaac Asimov’s long-thought-unadaptable stories. Season two improved on its predecessor by simplifying its timeline, emphasizing an urgent sense of pacing, and adding some surprising humor here and there.
But the finale, “Creation Myths,” was full of big reveals and even bigger decisions—certainly a sign that David S. Goyer and Foundation’s other creatives hope there’ll be more to come. While we wait for any news of a season three, let’s go through the wild ride that ended season two.
“Creation Myths” begins with a device that propelled much of Foundation season one, but hasn’t been as prevalent in season two: narration that feels like a diary entry, courtesy of Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell). Gaal was introduced as a math genius but has seen her towering psychic gifts—including her ability to predict the future in a far more visceral and specific manner than the psychohistory of Hari Seldon (Jared Harris)—take center stage. “When I was a child, I used to ask my mother endless questions,” she muses. “What happens after we die? Where does our energy go? And what about the universe: can it die? How was it ever born? How could there have been nothing, and then suddenly something?”
We also have some existential puzzlements to work through, as it happens. Since Foundation began, Hari has taken many forms. After he engineered his own murder in season one, he’s popped back up as a hologram (in multiple places), and then somehow had one of those holograms transformed into an actual human body. Then, we saw that body drown, thanks to mind-mangling cult leader Tellem Bond (Rachel House). But then, at the end of episode nine, Hari suddenly reappeared in the nick of time, rescuing Salvor (Leah Harvey) and Gaal from Tellem and her army. How?
The explanation is, even for a show so prone to WTF moments, highly convoluted. See, Gaal was able to mind-link with Hari, freeing him and guiding him to safety—while forcing the poor sap who was guarding Hari to take his place. Then, she used some razzle-dazzle to make the guard look exactly like Hari, and exerted a lot of effort to keep Tellem and company from figuring out the truth. Long story short: Tellem’s dead, Hari-with-a-body is alive. Tellem’s white-robed minions emerge from the Ignis forest, grateful to be freed of her oppressive presence—major “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” vibes in this scene.
Elsewhere, as we saw last week while Terminus was being targeted by Empire’s bitchy sense of justice, Demerzel (Laura Birn) decided she was finished with the increasingly unhinged Brother Day (Lee Pace). Realizing his many cumulative failings had overtaken anything she could do to set him back on track, she high-tailed it back to Trantor to handle more pressing business. That being, of course, that Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann) and Rue (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) had discovered the hidden cell where Demerzel was kept for thousands of years—from the end of the Robot Wars until Cleon I discovered her, hundreds of years prior to Foundation’s present—and were then, themselves, sealed inside by Cleon I’s hologram.
They’re now privy to the truth about Demerzel’s motives: while she’s no longer imprisoned physically, she’s forced to serve Empire thanks to a chip Cleon I implanted in her neck. While the various Cleon clones have believed they’ve been ruling in the 600 years since Cleon I’s reign, it’s really been Demerzel manipulating events and even people’s memories to make sure Empire stays on target. All this time, she’s been the real Empire—but, as a slave to her programming, she’s not able to make decisions or control her actions. When Dusk confronts her, there are tears in her eyes, and she says, “You bridle at the fact that I curate what you know, and yet you take for granted that your feelings are entirely your own... this is not the case for me.”
We can see she wants to help Dusk and Rue end the dynasty, and she dearly wants her freedom. But she is forced by her ruthless programming to protect Empire, through any means necessary—like, say, sabotaging the royal wedding by framing Queen Sareth (Ella-Rae Smith) for the assassination attempt on Day (which Demerzel herself arranged, of course) we saw in the season premiere. (In a cutaway, we see a terrified Sareth being arrested.) And she can’t let Rue and Dusk go, now that they know her secrets. “I am truly sorry,” Demerzel says—and it looks like she actually means it, before she moves menacingly towards them.
In the Outer Rim, meanwhile, Day is smugly beholding the destruction of Terminus, and declares his intention to annihilate all the other planets who’ve become loyal to the Foundation. General Bel Riose (Ben Daniels), who’s just bid an emotional farewell to his husband, Glawen (Dino Fetscher)—trapped on the surface of Terminus when Day gave the order to destroy it—questions the idea. “You do this, you’ll be the moral ruin of Empire,” he cautions, and refuses to obey. Day’s catty response is the slap the man and relieve him of his duties, then order the fleet to head to the next target. But as they initiate the jump sequence... something’s wrong: a chain reaction is knocking out every ship, and will soon consume the main vessel, with no way for Empire to flee.
It’s no mistake though. It seems that Hari Seldon’s plan to send Hober Mallow (Dimitri Leonidis) to negotiate with the Spacers—the genetically engineered beings who facilitate deep-space travel—actually worked, though Foundation sure wanted us to believe Hober had failed. Sneaky! “We played you,” Hober tells Day. “Seldon baited you into a war, ordering your entire fleet to Terminus... you came right to us because you’re so fucking predictable.” This time, rather than a slap, Day delivers a solid punch to Hober’s face. Fisticuffs ensue, with Day loving that he’s in a physical fight (he literally says “I fucking love it” before spitting blood everywhere). Even bubbly Brother Constant, played by Isabella Laughland, gets a shot in, but Riose takes over, having it out with the cruel ruler whose always-dubious moral compass has gone completely off the scale. As the brawl gets bloodier, you start to realize that there’s still a plan in motion here. Riose gets tossed out the airlock... noooo! But wait! That ain’t Riose— it’s Day! Using that nifty body-switching device Hober’s been toting around, which Riose took from him when Hober was in the brig, Riose just spaced the most annoying man in the galaxy.
It’s a delightful moment, but short-lived; as the Imperial guards raise their guns, Riose reminds them “nobody’s making it off this ship alive.” Everybody hustles off to handle their final business, and Riose tells Hober and Constant there is a way that one of them can escape. He leads them to a small pod, and Hober and Constant argue (each saying the other should take it), but eventually Hober convinces Constant—who jokes that her secret first name is “Hope;” guess we’ll never learn what it really is?—to take it. As she flies away through space, the men go off to drink Hober’s prized bottle of wine. They share a bonding moment at the end of their lives—“Here’s to those who fight and ask why,” is Riose’s toast—but the serious moment takes a turn for the silly when they sip the precious liquid... only to realize it tastes terrible. They chuckle and clink glasses as the ship evaporates.
Back on Trantor, Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) chases after the guards marching with a shackled Sareth, wondering what is going on. Demerzel tells him that Sareth’s people were behind the assassination attempt, and questions his ability to be impartial. (Of course, she knew that Dawn and Sareth were plotting to conceive their own child.) “There will be no Empress, nor future heir whose line is marred with ill-intent,” she intones. “All is once again as it should be.” As she turns away, Dawn notices the green paint on her neck, left as a warning by Dusk—he know Dawn would correctly interpret the sign, since earlier they’d looked at a mural together with an image of green paint marking a betrayer from Empire’s past. Demerzel knows almost everything—but she doesn’t realize the paint is there until it’s too late. That gives Dawn enough time to swoop into Sareth’s room, grab her, and take off running.
Elsewhere on Trantor, a panicky underling is watching a transmission that’s showing the entire fleet folding in on itself—including the vessel that Day was on (at least, prior to being booted into open space). The crisis gets worse as the feed cuts to Dawn and Sareth addressing the crowds, telling them of Day’s death and announcing their own planned nuptials. To her horror, Demerzel realizes it’s not really Dawn and Sareth making the transmission... it’s Sareth’s servants, disguised by facial scramblers. Dawn calls Demerzel, telling her he knows she killed Dusk. She warns him her programming means she will be forced to hunt them down, and says they’ll just decant another Dawn clone and people will forget about this version of him. Sareth’s not so sure—and she breaks the news that she’s pregnant with Dawn’s child. Demerzel almost sobs as Dawn calls Demerzel “the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever had,” and Sareth and Dawn zoom away to parts unknown.
With 20 minutes to go, we return to Tellum’s former cult compound. Everyone’s decompressing when one of the kids, looking distressed, rises slowly, picks up a gun, and aims it at Gaal. Salvor dives in front, taking the bullet for Gaal while winging a knife into the boy; as he dies, he chokes out that he was possessed by one last piece of Tellum, but can feel her dying with him now. As Salvor gushes blood from her wound, she calls Gaal “Mom” for the first time. “The future can be changed,” she declares, referring to Gaal’s vision that showed Salvor would die in a battle hundreds of years in the future. “You can still get it back on the right course.” Gaal is devastated, and Salvor gets a badass send-off—as is befitting her heroism—complete with a roaring funeral pyre.
In deep space, Constant is still in her space pod when suddenly we see... the Vault... just floating there and tractor-beaming her in. Bewildered, she sees Poly Verisof (Kulvinder Ghir) walk out of the darkness, followed by Hari Seldon, who tells her, “The Vault can do a great many things ... it was always the plan. Terminus would be sacrificed so the Foundation could survive.” Suddenly, we see the population of the planet is aboard the Vault, including people we thought were surely dead, like Constant’s father and Riose’s husband.
On Trantor, Demerzel stands in the room where the Cleon clones are kept in their tanks. As a brand-new Dawn, Day, and Dusk are hatched, she shows them the “powerful new tool” she’s acquired: the Prime Radiant that Hologram Hari gave her inside the Vault back on Terminus. “Wonderful things lie ahead,” she tells Empire.
Meanwhile, on Ignis, the other Hari—the one with a body—sits with a teary-eyed Gaal as she combs through the Prime Radiant, trying to make sense of Salvor’s death. Did it set the path of psychohistory back on track? “Here we are trying to save humanity, and we can’t even save the lives of the ones we love,” Hari says wryly, thinking of his murdered wife and unborn child. “You take the pain and the what-ifs, and you weave them into a narrative that pulls you forward,” he tells her. “Those losses matter if we make them matter.” The plan can still work, he assures her. They’ll just need to get Gaal 150 years into the future so she can have her destined confrontation with the evil Mule (Mikael Persbrandt). She protests—who’ll prepare the Second Foundation if she’s in cryosleep? Hari says he’ll do it, but she protests again; there are two cryopods, after all. Why not prepare the second Foundation together? Gaal will face the Mule eventually, and she doesn’t want to face any version of the ever-replicating Hari Seldon in the distant future without the Hari she considers to be part of her family by her side.
They climb into their pods and count primes together as they enter stasis. Gaal’s narration takes us out: “How could there be nothing, and then suddenly something? Close your eyes. Listen to my words. And dream.” Then: we cut to 152 years later. The Mule—standing somewhere dark with bombs falling outside—is reacting to the arrival of Gaal in his timeline. With mounting fury, he vows he’ll have to find her before she finds him, and destroy her, “even if I have to burn everything to do it.”
Considering we barely learned anything about the Mule in season two, other than that he’s a really, really angry guy with frightening psychic powers, that’s the obvious entry point if Foundation season three happens—along with Gaal and Hari’s second Foundation, the whereabouts of the first Foundation, the fate of Dawn and Sareth’s bloodline, and whatever Demerzel managed to figure out to do with the Prime Radiant. Some excellent characters won’t be along for the ride (Salvor, Riose, Hober), but there still feels like quite a lot of road left if Foundation returns. If Apple TV+ brings it back, will you tune into season three?
Both seasons of Foundation are now streaming on Apple TV+.
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